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The scene in the play of King John, where Hubert comes to put out Arthur's eyes, but his mercy is awakened by the child's "innocent prate," is an illustration of what Dryden remarks, that Shakspeare is the " Janus of Poets, having both a beautiful and a deformed face, whilst you scarcely look at the one before he turns the other towards you." In this scene we have one face and then the other often exchanged.

An instance of the effect of a child's smile in saving its life is thus related by Herodotus. The Oracle of Delphi having disclosed that a child of Eetion would rule over Corinth, the reigning family sent ten persons to destroy it. They came to Eetion's house when he was from home, and asked to look at the child; its mother, Labda, believing that they asked from friendship to her husband, gave her child into the arms of one of the party. It had been concerted, that whoever should first have the child in his hands was to dash it on the ground. It happened that the infant smiled in the face of the man to whom the mother had intrusted it. He was seized with an emotion of pity, and found himself unable to destroy it. With these feelings he gave the child to the person next him, who gave it to a third, till thus it passed through the hands of all the ten; no one was able to murder it, and it was returned to the mother. On leaving the house, they stopped at the gate and began to accuse and reproach each other; and, after a short interval, they agreed to enter the house again; and jointly destroy the child. But the mother had overheard them, and hid it in a place little obvious to suspicion, namely, in a corn-measure. When the child grew up, and was afterwards ruler of Corinth, he went by the name of Cypselus, in memory of the danger he had escaped in the corn-measure, the Greek word for which is cypsela.

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Some ancient circumstances in regard to children may here be considered together. In Grimaldi's Genealogical Antiquities, where he points out the peculiarities of English monuments in each century, under the head of the sixteenth century, he observes-" A kneeling attitude for children takes date not till after the Reformation; nor for parents except to the Cross; nor the infant in swaddling clothes, nor cradle." Such peculiarities are often of importance, when the legend cannot be deciphered, or has been tampered with. Of a similar nature is the fact that the latest date of animals at the feet is 1645. So the earliest trace of armorial bearings in England is supposed to be on a monument of the Earl of Essex in the Temple church of the date of 1148.

Mothering-Sunday in the middle of Lent was the day in which offerings were made to the Mother Church; but, down to recent memory, when apprenticeships were much more common than at present, all apprentices had liberty to visit their mothers on that day, and, in the country, were feasted with furmety. In old Catholic times in this country, children made money by praying for souls. For example, in the will of one Thomas Windsor, dated in the year 1479, I find the following clause:-" Item.—I will that there be 100 children within the age of 16 years to be at my Monthes-mind to pray for my soul." The Monthes-mind was a service performed for the dead one month after their decease. By a perversion very common in popular phrases, people sometimes say, I have a month's mind to do a thing, signifying a great desire to do it. The phrase is used in this sense in Shakspeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, and in the curious Satires of Bishop Hall.

And sets a month's mind upon smiling May,
And dies his beard that did his age bewray.

A theory for the origin of the common sign of the Eagle and Child (vulgarly called Bird and Baby) is given in the Aviary. I have since met with another which is not improbable, and is certainly ingenious, viz. Aiguille et Fil. It is not so great a transition as those which brought us to the Bull and Mouth, and Bag of Nails. The anglicising of a French word is very natural; thus we have the Bell-Savage; and the London snobs call the new Police "John-Harm-us-es" (Gendarmes.)

Our medallic history comprises several medals on the birth of James the Second's son, of which mention has been made with reference to Dryden's ode. One satirical medal on this subject represents a young stem shooting from a withered tree, with a motto " Tamen nascatur, oportet." Having mentioned the "Towers of Julius" it may not be quite irrelevant to observe that one of our medals, in honor of the seven Bishops, has, on one side, the White Tower, and on the other, seven stars, with a motto, taken from Job, “Quis restinguet Pleiadum delicias."

The scenes of wretchedness occasioned by the plague in London, as they affected mothers who were nursing infants, are described by an eye-witness, Wither. This author has written some beautiful poetry, sufficient to redeem him from his place in the Dunciad, to which some volumes of trash gave him considerable pretensions.

Whilst in her arms the mother thought she kept
Her infant safe; Death stole him when she slept.
Sometimes he took the mother's life away,
And left the little babe to lie and play
With her cold breast, and childish game to make
About those eyes that never more shall wake.

It may be excusable to add, though it be only in a second degree relevant to our subject, a few lines from the commencement of Wither's description of the hurry of the citizens to escape from the Plague:

Those who in all their lifetime never went
So far as is the nearest part of Kent;
Those who did never travel, till of late,
Half way to Pancras, from the City-gate.
Those who might think the sun did rise at Bow,
And set at Acton, for aught they did know.
Even some of these have journies ventur'd on,
Five miles by land (as far as Edmonton.)
Some climbed Highgate-Hill, and there they see
The world so large, that they amazed be.
Yea, some have gone so far, that they do know
Ere this, how wheat is made, and malt doth grow.
O, how they trudged, and bustled up and down
To get themselves a furlong out of town.

Mention has been made, in the first chapter, of the Children of the Chapel. Richard III issued a warrant authorizing the taking of singing children for the purpose of singing at court, and Queen Elizabeth, in the 27th year of her reign, issued a similar warrant "to take upp suche apte and meete children, as are most fitt to be instructed and framed in the arte and science of musicke and singing," and "them or anye of them to bringe awaye, without anye letts, contradictions, staye, or interruption, to the contrarye." A similar warrant was issued by King James in 1604. After serving three years, if they lost their voices, they were to be sent to College to be taught at the King's charge. These children used to act plays, first at their singing school in St. Paul's Church-yard, whence they are sometimes called the "Children of Paules,"

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and afterwards, at Blackfriars' Theatre. Their ancient appellation was that of "Children of the Chapel." After James I came to the crown, they were usually called the "Children of Her Majesty's Revels; who were first placed under the direction of the Poet Daniel, who thus obtained a new office, that of Master of the Queen's Revels. It was of one of the Children of the Revels that Ben Jonson's elegy, quoted in the Aviary, says, that he played the parts of old men so well, that the Parcæ by mistake took him for one, and cut the thread of his life prematurely.

It is not intended, in the present chapter, to enter deeply into the subject of the "shooting of young ideas" as it will be better connected with the school-boy's satchel; although it will be observed, that Sir W. Jones' Andrometer, or scale of intellectual improvement, is graduated with some new acquirements for every year, beginning with the first. To the next chapter will also belong the phænomena of early talents. and early crimes, though it will be there seen that there have been musical prodigies at a year and a half and two years old; and area-sneaks have shewn a very precocious tact and genius for handling matters which lie below the surface. However, one or two vicious propensities are usually indicated at such a very early period of life as to require particular notice in this chapter; especially, as notwithstanding their infantile character, they wounded the conscience of one of the most eminent of English Divines, the celebrated Baxter, in advanced age. (See Baxter's life of Himself, B. 1, part 1, p. 2.)

"1. When a child, I was much addicted, when I feared correction, to lie, that I might escape.

"2. I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples and pears.

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